Matt Hanson uses late push to win second consecutive...

Matt Hanson celebrates winning his second consecutive and third Ironman North American Championship at The Woodlands.

Photo: Michael Minasi, Staff Photographer / Houston Chronicle

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Melissa Hauschildt of Australia gets a boost from spectators en route to winning the women’s division of the Ironman North American Championship.

Photo: Yi-Chin Lee / Houston Chronicle

THE WOODLANDS — Matt Hanson made a final push in the last two miles to win his second consecutive and third overall Ironman North American Championship on Saturday.

Hanson, who is from Storm Lake, Iowa, was neck and neck with Ivan Tutukin of Russia for the entire marathon portion of the triathlon as the pair chased down leader Andrew Starykowicz.

With two miles to go in the 140.6-mile endurance race, the 2015 and 2017 North American champion made his move.

“At the 24th mile, I started to cramp up quite a bit,” Hanson, 32, said. “I sucked down as much salt as I could and kind of made the decision that I’d done a heck of a lot of work. I did a lot up front on the bike, probably too much, and I did too much up front on the run. I had come way too far to let this one slip away.”

At the finish line, which Hanson crossed in 7 hours, 39 minutes, 25 seconds, he was greeted by his wife Ashley, who nervously was shaking in the final moments as she waited for her husband to finish.

“This is my fourth Ironman win, and she’s been at the finish line for every one and that’s the most addicting feeling in the world, to hear her say, ‘we did it,’ because it really is a ‘we,’” Hanson said. “I definitely couldn’t do it without her support.”

Starykowicz had a bike split of 3:54:59 and led by as many as 9 minutes before Hanson and Tutukin passed him with less than 10 miles to go in the marathon.

“You never know with Andrew,” Hanson said when asked if he knew he would be able to catch Starykowicz. “He’s such a phenomenal athlete. We had perfect conditions. I was actually hoping for a little bit more wind — I knew he was going to go out and just smash the bike.”

The bike was a pivotal part of the race for Hanson, too.

He exited the 2.6-mile swim in 17th place and 3½minutes off the lead. About a quarter of the way through the 112-mile bike race, Hanson moved from 13th place to third behind Starykowicz and Johann Ackermann, a German who led overall at times and finished the bike race in second place.

“We’ve been hitting the bike really hard,” Hanson said of his training. “I had a really, really good bike in Galveston a couple weeks ago, so I was really confident in what I had in my bike legs. There was really no question, I knew I had to get into that group. All the big hitters were there.”

With Tutukin as a close competitor and, by his proximity, a motivator, Hanson averaged a 5-minute, 55-second mile in the marathon on his way to victory.

“I’ve never been in a battle like that and I never care to be in a battle like that again,” Hanson said. “It was awesome stuff, man. God gave me the strength to finish the last mile.”

In the women’s division, Australia’s Melissa Hauschildt battled blisters toward the end of her run but still crossed the finish line 12 minutes ahead of the second woman.

Hauschildt got off her bike in seventh place and then found herself in the lead before the 8-mile mark of the marathon after erasing the 5-minute, 16-second gap.

“The run’s my strongest leg, so I was hoping to be no more than five, six minutes down off the bike,” she said. “I felt pretty confident when I got off the bike.”

Right before Hauschildt took the lead, her pace was a 6-minute, 5-second mile. Over the entire marathon, she averaged a 6-minute, 46-second mile.

“I was right on the pace that I wanted to run,” she said. “My feet were blistering up, though, so my last 10k was a bit slow and I had a toilet stop, so I lost about a minute there.”

Jodie Robertson, who won last year’s North American Championship, was the women’s runner-up at 8:43:15. Robertson was about 13 minutes faster than last year’s winning time.

“I don’t think it really did (impact approach), you always just go by your game plan,” she said of racing the course in 2017. “You just have to manage the day that you’re given because it doesn’t always work out to what you think it should be.”

Robertson was in the top two with about 7 miles to go. She got off the bike in fourth place, about five minutes behind Great Britain’s Kimberley Morrison, who finished eighth.

“I came off the bike pretty good with these girls, then I had a rough first loop — like five, six miles on the run,” Robertson said. “I definitely lost a lot of time, then I kind of got in a groove and was just able to make up time.”

Lauren Brandon, a former All-America swimmer at Nebraska, got out to an early lead after her swim that was 5½minutes faster than second place. Her lead grew to about 7½minutes before she was passed by Morrison late in the bike race.

America’s Lesley Smith got off of her bike in 13th place and then surged to a third-place finish while averaging a 6-minute, 50-second mile in the marathon.

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